Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Another pollster finds an incremental movement to Labor, and gives Bill Shorten an improved set of personal ratings.

The latest fortnightly result from Essential Research follows Newspoll in recording a one-point move to Labor, who now lead 53-47 on two-party preferred. As reported by The Guardian, the primary votes have the Coalition down a point to 37%, Labor up a point to 38%, the Greens down a point to 8% (their weakest result in any poll since September 2016) and One Nation up a point to 7%. The pollster’s leadership ratings (which they normally do monthly, but this is the first set since January) have Scott Morrison steady on 43% approval and up two on disapproval to 41%, Bill Shorten up three to 38% and down three to 44%, and Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister at 44-31, compared with 42-30 last time.

Other findings relate to climate change and asylum seekers. On the former cont, 62% express belief in climate change caused by human activity, and 51% say Australia is not doing enough to address it. On the latter, 52% believed the government was acting out of genuine concern in reopening Christmas Island while 48% said it was a political ploy (suggesting there was no uncommitted option, which would be unusual for Essential). Also featured was an occasion suite of questions on best party to handle various issues, which seems to have produced typical results, with the Coalition stronger on broader protection and economic management and Labor stronger on the environment, wages, health and education, as well as housing affordability. The full report should be with us later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1089.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.
View all posts by William Bowe

imacca says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 2:44 pm
ok guys. I have been maintaining the opinion that the chances of an ALP win in the NSW election are pretty slim. That said i have not a lot of interest of knowledge on NSW state politics, me Federal focused.

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Like with Territory , state and federal elections , the libs/nats are very very unlikely to win with a combined primary of 40% or below

There is a level of interest around the idea of 88% of Australians governed by Labor at both State and Federal levels. At the state level Labor governs Vic (25%), Qld (20%), and WA (11%). Adding NSW (32%) would make it close to 9 out of 10 Australians, and of course all but the two smaller States.

Around 80% who vote Green will preference ALP ahead of Coalition. And, from a Greens voter its where they preference ALP vs Lib that is pretty much their vote on who they want to be the party of Govt. So, only 20% or so of Greens voters prefer the Coalition as the party to form Government.
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Indeed. I don’t hear BW or Briefly rejecting Greens preferences that contributed to 55 of the 69 ALP seats won in 2016 or saying ‘No thanks, we will give that seat back to the Coalition because the Greens preferences got the ALP over the line” in 2019. Most of their complaints about the Greens on PB appear to be poorly camouflaged trolling.

The Government seems to be running out of hands with their messaging about the economy.

On the one hand the economy is stuttering.
On the other hand they want to claim that they are good economic managers.
On the third hand they want to pump prime the economy.
On the fourth hand they want to frighten the punters about how Labor will make the economy worse.

“It is understood Mr Morrison made a forceful pitch to recruit Mr Kaldas at a face-to-face meeting the week before last, and in subsequent phone calls.
They discussed the former cop’s national security credentials, particularly in light of the possibility that Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will lose his marginal seat of Dickson at the election.”

Dutton must be really pleased that Morrison has such great faith in him retaining Dickson!

It’s probably a good time for the Federal Treasurer to invest enough taxpayers’ money with the bookies to narrow the differential between the Coalition and Labor. It might boost their confidence a bit!

Great to talk to Lisa from Party Help party planning, with Senator James Paterson and @KateAshmor – Liberal for Macnamara, at the Macnamara Small Business Fair in Melbourne today.

I understand the Libs’ campaign in Macnamara is in trouble, so it’s good they’ve got Michaelia on the case.
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I love it when our fearless leader shows his cynical side :D. I th0ught she was in witness protection on Christmas Island with Peter Dutton and Melissa Price till he got his Border Protection team to bust him out and get him back to the mainland to try and save his seat today.

This is quite an interesting article about some of the potential consequences inside the Vatican from the Babarin and Pell convictions.

The article posits that the convictions may be able to do what other processes have failed to do. The Vatican part of the RCC has been able to absorb resignations of Cardinals and the fact that other Cardinals are travelling under what might generously be called a protection racket cloud. In Sydney tabloid parlance, there are more than a few colourful Cardinal identities on the loose.

But this article sets out some potential consequences of the convictions which would be a step change more dangerous than the resignations.

Boerwar says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 5:09 pm
EB
Was that a demand, an argument, an announcement, a proposal or a pretence? Come back to me when the Greens have done something real.

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Ok, the Greens supported the Medivac Bill in the Senate and HOR, the Greens helped Labor win 55 of 69 seats in 2016 and the dental POLICY document cited earlier reads to me like a policy based on substantial research, not just a presser ‘announcement pretence’ as you have tried to frame it. But troll away my friend….facts never get in the way of a zealots world view. Have a nice day.

EB
The Greens ‘contribution’ to the Medevac Bill was one vote out of a House of 147.
Which reminds me. How many people are off Nauru or Manus as a direct result of this one vote?
And that is it for thirty years?
As for Greens preferences, if there were no Greens preferences Labor would pick up that primary vote without having to have the Greens destructively pestering them all the time.

Dan
The last one who had a go at debunking the GMOs was Patrick Bateman.
He announced that he had perused the Greens GMO policy and it said nothing about closing down the cotton industry.
But he disappeared when I pointed out the two lines in the GMO policy which would effectively remove GMO cotton from Australia: removal of all GMOs from the environment and a total ban on gene terminator technology.
Both are fundamental to our cotton crop.
Over to you.

Talking of rabbits – I was up country (Thailand) in the North East last month. BBQ Rice Rat was the local speciality. Could say it tasted like Chicken but all this talk of rabbit makes me think along that line.

Critique of a Greens policy in isolation from countervailing influences, such as the composition of the parliament, the Lower House and the Senate, plus the individual character of those Senators that a federal Labor government would have to negotiate with and likely agree to the amendments of, is basically pointless at this point in the electoral cycle.

EB
The Greens ‘contribution’ to the Medevac Bill was one vote out of a House of 147.
Which reminds me. How many people are off Nauru or Manus as a direct result of this one vote?
And that is it for thirty years?
As for Greens preferences, if there were no Greens preferences Labor would pick up that primary vote without having to have the Greens destructively pestering them all the time.

If by ‘destructively’ you mean campaigning against the Labor rights lurch into neo-liberalism and environmental/humanitarian vandalism, then that is a badge of honour.

Speaking of Olympic Dam, Astrobleme was the champion for the Greens position.

In summary the argument is that it is not a uranium mine despite the fact that it produces something like 4000 tonnes of Uranium Oxide a year.
The second argument is that it is possible to separate the uranium oxide, store in onsite and not sell it.
The third argument is that this will not make any difference to Olympic Dam bottom line.
Not a single Greens supporter of this policy inanity has been able to integrate the fact that a quarter of the gross income of Olympic Dam mine comes from uranium oxide sales.
The operating costs would increase with the need to permanently and safely store tens of thousands of tonnes of uranium oxide.
Astrobleme simply announced that Olympic Dam was very profitable.

As for Greens preferences, if there were no Greens preferences Labor would pick up that primary vote without having to have the Greens destructively pestering them all the time.

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That comment clearly demonstrates the mythology of your approach to the Greens. Diversity is here to stay in Australian politics and I welcome it. You can wish all you like for the RED v BLUE politics of the 70’s to be revived all you like, but it is NOT going to happen. Last time I looked Australia was a democracy not a duopoly. Are you going to reject Greens preferences in the seat/seats you are canvassing ? No. Get back to me when you do reject Green preferences otherwise you remain vulnerable to trolling accusations, right or wrong.

zoomster says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 5:37 pm
The Greens do not ‘own’ the votes they’re given. If voters want to give their second preference to Labor, that isn’t a ‘gift’ from the Greens – it is a decision made by individual voters.

Sophie Mirabella made this kind of argument, saying that the Nationals were responsible for her loss because their voters didn’t preference her. It’s a very arrogant attitude.
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I agree: I will reframe it to GREENS voters who preferenced Labor ahead of the Coalition in 55 seats.

Over on Speers they are fulminating about the kids Global Warming day off school. In fact, Sky has spent far more time fulminating about culture war stuff vaguely associated with Global Warming than it has with Global Warming itself.